Sunday, November 27, 2011

I’ve been hearing about The Big Bang Theory
for a while now, and it has been recommended to me a few times by
associates within my academic circle–by friends with both Asian and
non-Asian backgrounds.Interesting… I thought to myself. A clever comedy? That could be refreshing. And of course, I was also interested to see how they would play out the character of Raj Koothrappali, as East Indians are rarely favourably portrayed (or even included) in American sitcoms.I’ll have to admit I was less than
impressed with the initial episode I watched. What had been sold to me
as a “smart sitcom” seemed more like a series of dull, mildly depressing
and unintelligent ramblings of grown-up Superbad characters. But it’s alright for light-entertainment before bed, I convinced myself, slightly out of desperation as there are so few quality shows on the air nowadays.Still, there was something that didn’t
quite sit right with me about the show. I even felt mildly uncomfortable
watching it. After a few more episodes, I started to admit to myself
that I really disliked the show’s attitude toward Raj, but once again,
the critic in me acquiesced to the more naive part of myself, and I told
myself that I was just being hypersensitive.Then the racist element really started
to get under my skin, and I started documenting the evidence for
societal observance purposes. That and blog fodder.The first moment that I probably felt
that internal burn that we all feel when we know we are being
discriminated against is during the first episode, when Penny (the
show’s token “hot girl,” who actually is pretty adorable) addresses Raj,
and he doesn’t answer her. Her immediate response is, “I’m sorry, do
you speak English?”This problematic assumption is worsened
by the fact that it is sidekick Howard who steps in and speaks for him,
explaining that he cannot answer her because he is “a nerd.” Great, I said to myself, so
the one time an East Indian is cast in a lead role in an American
sitcom, not only is he part of a group with questionable attitudes
towards women, a group so pathetic, so painfully nerdy that even I want
to give them all wedgies,but he also has to be silenced.Raj Koothrappali is robbed of his voice:
a key feature of colonialism, sexism, slavery, and oppression in
general. Is it the tale of Columbus, or of the scores of humans he
slaughtered, that we are taught of with semi-folklore status in our
history classes today? Is it the women or the men who are noted as the
prime social reformers and philosophers of their time? When we discuss
politics, both national and foreign, ancient and modern, who has their
say? Certainly not those whom it would be most relevant to hear from.
And let’s face it, in American history, it’s the Anglo-saxon version
that dominates despite the myth of the melting pot. This is what
subjugation is all about.Is Raj’s inability to speak a comedic aspect of his character, or a symptom of something more insidious in The Big Bang Theory?
Why couldn’t it be the socially inept Sheldon, the uncouth and sexually
repulsive Wallowitz, or even lame Leonard who is rendered with this
ignominy?Relax! You say to me. You
are over-analyzing it! It’s just a show. And anyways, Wallowitz is
Jewish. He is also a member of a minority group that has faced extreme
discrimination in American society. So what if he spoke for Raj in this
instance? He does not have the agency to be racist.Okay, let’s agree to disagree and say
that Raj’s fleeting loss-of-voice isn’t racist. But it isn’t only
Wallowitz who speaks for–and even defines–who Raj is. In The Precious Fragmentation, (S3 E17), it is the leading-nerd Sheldon Cooper, a Texan of Anglo-saxon ancestry, who distinguishes Raj as “the foreigner who tries to understand our culture and fails.” This instance draws parallels to the Hegelian master/slave
dialectic, wherein the slave, through systemic oppression, is (at least
initially) only able to see himself through the eyes of his oppressor.
His oppressor ends up being the one who provides him with his
identity. Moreover, why is Raj’s character forever seen as an
outsider incapable of assimilation? He is a smart, functional (aside
from his encounters with women) member of society who speaks fluent
English and almost seems to abhor anything remotely “Indian.” Yet he is
not “one of them.” He is not an American, and in the eyes of Sheldon,
who emblematizes not only the dorky Anglo-saxon, but also small-town, White American nerd-dom, he never will be.The show doesn’t stop there with
Sheldon’s sense of entitlement to speak as the wiser, more advanced one
in comparison to his foreign comrade. In The Gorilla Experiment (S3,
E10), after Penny cutely throws and catches food in her mouth, Sheldon
makes a condescending remark about how he dislikes when she acts “willy
nilly” towards food without concern for its equitable distribution. He
then addresses Raj with an uncalled-for and inaccurate attack, stating
“Raj, this is essentially why you have famine in India.” This is an instance of the classic “ruler-knows-best” colonial symptom.It doesn’t take a self-appointed genius
like Cooper to know that India, a major exporter of the world’s food,
hasn’t had a famine since after the British left. Under British rule,
millions Indians died of starvation during at least 25 well-documented
famines, while the colonists gained inspiration for their later
behaviour in Ireland by inducing Indian famines through looting the country’s food and goods and taxing people for everything (see: The Bengal Famine,
which killed 1/3 of the population, or 15 million people). Interesting
how colonial thought enjoys distorting these basic facts.In The Jiminy Conjecture (S3
E2), Sheldon even reminds Raj of his ancestral colonial connection
during a disagreement where Raj remarks he would be “kicking [Sheldon's]
butt” if this argument was in his Native tongue.“English is your Native language!” Sheldon quickly and thoughtlessly repudiates, met by the laughter of the audience.So Sheldon can state that Raj’s Native
tongue is English, however Raj is still far from an American, “failing”
to comprehend his cultural norms. This attitude is typical of the
British Raj, who forever tried to Anglocize India, while never agreeing
that India was “Anglo” enough. For example, Sir Babington Macaulay, a
hailed reformer of the Indian education system (whose role in the
outlawing of all homosexual activity is conveniently ignored) and a
fierce proponent of English-medium schools despite his inefficiency in
the English language, had this to say about India: “I have no knowledge
of either Sanscrit [sic] or Arabic, but [...] a single shelf of a good
European library are [sic] worth the whole literature of India and
Arabia.”* Even after Macaulay had done his damage and outlawed
homosexuality, Vicery Elgin still referred to homosexual amour as
“special Oriental vices.”** Macaulay’s “reforms” reveal an example
of the British colonial view that although India was English-speaking,
it’s still not English. Their so-called “backwardness” was basically an
inherent “Oriental vice.” Similarly, Raj may speak English, but Sheldon
will never see him as on-par with his fellow Americans.It’s not racist, it’s funny! you protest. Raj
knows he is “the foreigner” and he plays upon it, calling his friends
out on their racism and coming back with witty remarks whenever
he’s faced with it! This show is far from depicting Raj’s role as
that of the inferior immigrant.Not always. Again in The Jiminy Conjecture,
when the nerds meet with a cricket expert (who has just been fired) to
settle their asinine dispute, he lashes out at them with comical
irrationality–at least, until he gets to Raj, where his anger takes on a
racist turn.“What’s your deal?” he says to Raj, as
he gives him the cat-eye. “Are they out-sourcing my job to Bangalore?”
Again, this question is met with audience laughter. Raj’s retort is
simply, “I’m from New Delhi.” Although this response does elicit the
sense of incomprehension that educated people when confronted with
extreme ignorance, I was disappointed that none of Raj’s friends stood
up for him, and I was left with that same uncomfortable feeling in my
stomach.Further, I would argue that Raj’s homeland is seen as subordinate to The Land of Opportunity. In The Pirate Solution (S3
E17) when Raj faces deportation, he whines incessantly about how he
doesn’t want to go back. After all, India is “hot, it’s loud, and there
are so many people! You have no idea–they’re everywhere!” He rebukes
the McDonald’s in Mumbai for not selling beef, degrading his culture
while glorifying this ethically questionable MNC by going on and on
about the wonders of animal flesh. As an animal rights activist,
frankly, I was horrified to watch this episode.Yes, this is just Raj’s opinion of India
I’m discussing here, but none of the other characters even attempt to
cheer him up. Rather, Sheldon suggests becoming a pirate as a
suitable alternative to living in India, contending that it’s what he
would do in Raj’s position. To the Big Bang nerds, India is a strange,
uninteresting, faraway land they wouldn’t visit even for one of their
closest friends. Howard remarks that India is a very far plane-ride
away, and that instead they should “Skype.”(I could probably find even more
instances of racism in a show that is so chock-full of it, but as you
can probably tell, I only watched Season 3, and I feel that that is more
than enough for a lifetime.)So overall, this is The Big Bang Theory‘s stance
on India: boring, far, hot, and inferior. A place undeserving of
even fact-checking before you throw a few reproachful comments its way.
In fact, India is so unworthy that even Howard wouldn’t go there for his
best friend, with whom he shares a latent but palpable bi-curiousity.The end._____* Quote from Macaulay’s Minute on Education can be found here.
PS–Why Macaulay took an opportunity to diss Arabia when he was supposed
to be commenting on education in India will always be beyond me.** Suparna Bhaskaran. “The Politics of Penetration: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code,” in Queering India, ed. Ruth Vanita, p. 17. Routledge, 2002.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

here in Anglo-America where there is a growing immigrant and non-white population. the white-owned and often racist networks only show programs with all white actors, anchors and hosts and engage in tokenism. non-whites are barely seen. In Australia, it;s the same thing. You go outside, go to school and work and see many people of different backgrounds and a growing non-white immigrant population, when you turn on the tv and all you see is white hosts and actors and programs with all-white casts.

MORE than 2 million Australians were born in Asia and our Indian-born
population has more than trebled in a decade, but mainstream
television, other than SBS, rarely reflects this fact.
Newsreaders and current affairs show hosts are almost exclusively white. And while The Slap
was hailed for mirroring contemporary life, the average family drama is
still palely Eurocentric. Is this an innocent case of the blonde
leading the bland or a subtle form of racism?
The ABC provides stellar news coverage, from News Breakfast to Lateline.
But as journalist Margaret Simons recently observed: ''Anyone watching
ABC's main news and current events shows could be forgiven for thinking
that Australia was still a nation composed of blond or red-headed,
blue-eyed Anglo Celts.''

Hosts of commercial programs are similarly white - from Kochie and Karl Stefanovic to 60 Minutes and The Project.
Most commercial TV dramas inhabit an eerily pale Australia of yesteryear. The Neighbours website features 17 white actors and one (Gemma Pranita) whose father is Thai. Winners and Losers had 11 white leads and one ''part-Asian''. Home and Away has 22 white leads plus Jay Laga'aia. Packed to the Rafters features a loveable white family. All Saints,
a medical drama that ran until late 2009, was spectacularly fictitious.
''How can a show that is based entirely around a hospital have no brown
or Asian doctors?'' asked Melbourne comedian Nazeem Hussain.
The ABC's charter requires it to ''reflect the cultural
diversity of the Australian community'', and it's making some headway.
We have had The Slap and recent series from comedian Lawrence
Leung and chef Poh Ling Yeow. Still, prime-time ABC brims with British
shows. It rarely reflects the everyday world of my daughters' state
school, where their classmates have Chinese, Lebanese, Anglo-Celtic,
Polynesian, Indian and Vietnamese ancestry.
On commercial screens, multicultural Australia bursts into focus only on reality TV. The X Factor
finalists, for instance, included R&B trio Three Wishez who are,
respectively, ''Tongan-New Caledonian, full Greek and African-British''.
This year's Masterchef contestants included Sri Lankan-born Kumar Pereira and Malaysian-Australian Billy Law. On The Amazing Race Australia, Melbourne Muslims Mohammed El-leissy and Mostafa Haroun were a hit.
Though it's great to see this wider spectrum of
''ordinary Australians'', there's a degree of tokenism and typecasting
here. (And reality TV also includes Bondi Rescue and Border Security). The Block, meanwhile, was recently criticised by Multicultural Arts Victoria for its lack of ethnic diversity.
Of course SBS was set up by the Fraser government
specifically as a multicultural broadcaster. It has been accused of
chasing ratings at the expense of its charter and last week new chief
Michael Ebeid emphasised that its purpose was to ''inspire all
Australians to explore and appreciate our multicultural world'' and
contribute to an inclusive society.
Two of SBS's best recent shows, East West 101 and Go Back To Where You Came From,
have been truly ground-breaking, inviting viewers to investigate
assumptions about religion or race or refugees. Still, since SBS began,
Australia has become a lot more Asian and the number of free-to-air
channels has tripled. You would think this would have made mainstream TV
more representative. But change has been slow.
Almost half Australia's population was born overseas or
has one parent born elsewhere. While British and New Zealanders are
still the two biggest migrant groups, they are followed by Chinese and
Indians. Our Vietnamese-born community is almost as big as our Italian
one and recent new settlers have come from Iraq, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and
the Philippines.
This week, Victorian Multicultural Affairs and
Citizenship Minister Nick Kotsiras said that up to a third of the
students in classes he visited did not feel Australian. ''What makes you
feel that you're not part of Victoria, not part of Australia?'' he
asked. ''Our young people, when they grow up, if they keep that
impression then that would cause some frictions. We need to see why and
then try programs to assist them to feel part of … Team Australia.''
Kotsiras' comments seemed purely anecdotal and had a
whiff of the dog whistle. But if kids from India or Vietnam or Somalia
saw more people who looked like them on TV, might they feel more a part
of Team Australia? Hussain, whose parents are Sri Lankan-born, recalls
getting excited as a kid when he saw any non-white person on TV. It was
that rare.
TV can bring us together, bridging cultural or religious
divides. Civil society evolves and finds shared values and narratives
through entertainment, says Andrew Jakubowicz, professor of sociology at
Sydney's University of Technology. ''There is a crisis of recognition
of diversity in Australian public culture which gnaws at the heart of
the country,'' he has written. ''It is racism at its most systematic,
unselfconscious and destructive.'' (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of
myself - an Anglo-Celtic journalist - lamenting TV's lack of diversity.)
Why is TV so white? Does the existence of SBS, despite
the wonderful shows it makes, allow commercial producers to regard
non-white communities as a kind of ghetto? Does racism influence some
programming decisions? Ten's appalling new breakfast show host, New
Zealander Paul Henry, has form for making racist comments about Indians
and Hispanics.
Or is commercially driven caution the chief problem?
''Executives want shows that rate,'' Hussain says. ''They're not
willing to try something risky because their career is at stake. And
having non-white people in a show is something they think is risky … It
needs to be normalised.''
White Australia has faded into history. Surely it's time for commercial TV executives to look at the world around them.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

He’s an experienced homicide cop. Married many times, he wants
nothing more than to help his younger, naturally gifted partner nail any
murderer foolish enough to commit a crime in their city.
His name is Hank Griffin, a character on NBC’s new fairy-tale cop drama “Grimm.”

And he’s a Black Best Friend.
You’ve seen characters like Griffin, played by “Lincoln Heights” alum Russell Hornsby, many times before in film and television.
They’re
the folks who offer emotional support, wise, world-weary counsel and a
kick in the pants when needed — often administered with a dash of sass
and the occasional finger snap.
Loyal. Cool. Exotic. Supremely
confident. And eternally useful to the lead character. These are just a
few traits that define the Black Best Friend — the newest way to make
the cast of a TV show or film look diverse, while ensuring nonwhite
characters never really steal the spotlight for long.
The title
BBF may sound demeaning, as a flip dismissal of a hardworking actor. But
it’s really a cry of frustration, expressing a burning disappointment
in the lack of truly well-developed roles for nonwhite characters that
has smoldered so long that it has become a bitter humor.
Once upon a time, the lack of substantive roles for characters of color was front-page news.
Back
in 1999, when the Big Four TV networks advanced a slate of new fall
shows with no minorities in starring roles, advocacy groups like the
NAACP complained loudly about a “virtual whitewash” and media outlets
peppered executives with tough questions.
This fall, out of 26 new
scripted shows, there is not one featuring a person of color as its
sole star.Annie Ilonzeh on ABC’s canceled “Charlie’s Angels”
reboot and Shelly Conn on Fox’s sci-fi extravaganza “Terra Nova” come
the closest, as cast members in an ensemble jockeying for a memorable
scene or two.
Many new series have no people of color at all in
the core cast, including ABC’s “Pan Am” and CBS’s “A Gifted Man.” At a
time when census figures show America is more racially diverse than
ever, network TV seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
But there has been little, if any, notice paid to this year’s whitewash — thanks mostly to the BBF.
* * *
I first heard about BBFs in 2007, when the Los Angeles Times delivered a spot-on feature about all the African American actresses stuck in black best friend roles, especially in romantic comedies.
These
days, the trend has gone unisex, crossing gender and racial lines.
That’s right, Black Best Friends can be guys of any ethnicity; say, Kato
in the Green Hornet film or Detective Julio Sanchez on “The Closer.”
What
they have in common — besides not being white, of course — is a
devotion to helping their white friends achieve, sometime to the
detriment of their own circumstance. And despite the BBFs often having
an amazing pedigree, with cool jobs, prestigious careers or intriguing
personal history, viewers rarely see their lives away from the lead
character.
Indeed, there are so many BBFs on new fall shows this
year — I count 13 shows, from NBC’s canceled “Playboy Club” to CBS’s hit
“2 Broke Girls” and Fox’s “The New Girl” — that you can stick them in
their own categories.

Hornsby’s Hank Griffin is a sidekick BBF. He’s a loyal,
unquestioning pal backing up lead character Nick Burckhardt (David
Guintoli), a police detective who can see fairy-tale characters
disguised as average people.
Griffin is a walking plot device; showing up with handy
forensic results when their investigation needs to move forward, joking
with his buddy about marriage when we need a peek at Nick’s personal
life.

Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson is a different kind of black best friend on CBS’s “Person of Interest.” She’s an adversary BBF.
On
the surface her Detective Carter is trying to track down star Jim
Caviezel’s ex-CIA agent John Reese, but she’s really a sympathetic
character who offers help and advice when she first meets him.
Some actors are so good at playing BBFs, they do it twice in the same TV season.
Damon
Wayans Jr. was the black best friend on Fox’s “The New Girl,” until ABC
decided to keep making “Happy Endings,” a comedy where Wayans’s
character is less of a best friend and actually gets some of his own
story lines. (Onetime Cartoon Network game show host Lamorne Morris took
over the BBF gig on Fox.)
The tragedy of the BBF is that it
strands accomplished actors in lesser roles. Hornsby was a magnetic lead
presence in ABC Family’s “Lincoln Heights,” playing a Los Angeles cop
who chose to move back to his crime-riddled boyhood neighborhood. “2
Broke Girls’ ” Garrett Morris was a member of the classic original cast
of “Saturday Night Live.”
Many BBFs exist in a vacuum. You don’t see their relatives, spouses, kids or other friends of color.
In
fact, many of these characters could be any ethnicity. Their skin color
seems a bit like window dressing, employed to make shows that still
reflect an entirely Caucasian worldview look diverse.
* * *
There is hope. Witness the rise of Maya Rudolph’s character Ava on NBC’s “Up All Night.”
Developed
as a boss BBF in the original version of the show’s pilot, as a
high-powered publicist who employed new mom Christina Applegate as a
valued underling, Rudolph got an upgrade after producers revamped the
pilot for this fall.
Now Ava’s the star of an Oprah-style daytime
show, with Applegate as her executive producer, given more screen time
and a status as a near-co-star. (Rudolph, the daughter of the late
R&B singer Minnie Riperton and songwriter Richard Rudolph, is
biracial.)
So cheer up. There’s an outside chance that an actor of
color who works hard and does well can move up the pecking order to
nearly become a co-star if they’re just funny and mainstream-looking
enough.
And who knows? By treating characters like people rather
than plot devices, network TV just might just wind up with better shows
in the first place.
Deggans is the St. Petersburg Times TV/media critic.

Florence + the Machine released the latest video this past Friday, for “No Light No Light,” the third single from their new album Ceremonials. Since frontwoman Florence Welch is known for her theatrical music video productions, the clip was eagerly awaited by her fans.

The video, directed by Iceland-based duo Arni & Kinski,
has already garnered over 800,000 views on Youtube, in addition to
generating countless responses over the images in the video. It’s
actually slightly astounding how much racist imagery they managed to
pack into just four minutes and 15 seconds.

You
can watch the video for yourself to get your own interpretation, but if
you can’t watch it for whatever reason here’s a brief summary: Welch, a
thin white red-haired British woman, is the focal point, but at various
points, we see what seems to be an Asian man in blackface,
misreprentations of the voodoo religion (which of course inflicts harm
on the poor white woman). The overall plot of the video seems to be of a
white woman pursued by “darkness,” represented by the aforementioned
man in blackface, who ends up falling into “whiteness,” represented by a
choir of young white boys in a church. Oh yes, that old trope. Black =
evil, white = good. Echoes of British religious imperialism and its
violent history of colonization abound. You get the picture.

The video has already attractedcriticism from around the blogosphere, and Jezebel’s Dodai Stewart mapped out why the representaion of the Voodoo religion in the music video is not only negative, but factually incorrect:

Haitian
Vodou is a religion that is very misunderstood. Slaves were brought to
the Caribbean against their will and forbidden to practice their
traditional African religions as well as forced to convert to the
religion of their masters. The Bond movie/Eurocentric/Americanized
viewpoint presents Vodou as an evil, primitive version of witchcraft.
But it’s a religion like any other, with a moral code, gods and
goddesses. Many ceremonies deal with protection from evil spirits.

In
addition, the “voodoo doll” itself has been misconstrued. In Haiti, it
was traditional to nail small handmade puppets or dolls to trees near
graveyards; these small figures were meant to act as messengers to the
spirit world, and contact dead loved ones. It’s safe to imagine that
European folks didn’t understand this — and assumed an evil intent
behind a doll with nails in its body.”

On
the other hand, all sorts of defenses and excuses are being pulled out
of the hat to try and label this music video as anything other than what
it is: racist. Glorifying the white female central
character as representing goodness, all while vilifying the evil dark
skinned heathen Other. The number of times this has been done in film
date back to one of the very first blockbusters, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation,
and continue on until today with this latest incarnation. But in this
age of “colour-blindness” and “post-racial” talk, we confront a fairly
new beast: vehement denial.

That’s where a large part of the problem with the discussions around this music video lie – the desire to talk about anything other than race. Fans of Welch’s have offered their own denials, including:

Even fans who will readily agree that this music video is “symbolic” and uses darkness (in the shape of a, lest we forget, a human being,
an Asian man in blackface who practices voodoo and chases Welch) to
represent “evil” and whiteness to represent “good” will still find ways
to vehemently deny it is racist. “Maybe it looks like it could
be racist, but it didn’t mean to be!” they say. When it comes to
confronting the argument of whether or not the video was “intentionally”
racist, I’ll point to minh-ha t. pham’s response for Threadbared to Crystal Renn’s yellowface photoshoot, where she explains:

Racism
is so deeply entrenched and pervasive in many societies that everyday
racism is often unintentional. On the other hand, what is always
intentional is anti-racism. The struggle against racism resists the
pervasive ideologies and practices that explicitly and invisibly
structure our daily lives (albeit in very different ways that are
stratified by race, gender, class, and sexuality). Anti-racism requires
intentionality because it’s an act of conscience.

What
Pham hits on there is the need to first acknowledge we live in a world
where racism and white privilege exist. In the end, the excuses over why
“No Light, No Light” is not racist are pointless to entertain if you
can’t even begin to acknowledge that. You’d have to live in a very
sheltered world to believe that this video is anything other than a
giant platter of rehashed racist imagery.

Now,
one thing I’m surprised others have not raised in their criticisms of
the “No Light, No Light” music video is that this isn’t the first time
Welch has been criticized for being “culturally insensitive,” to put it
mildly. Her other music videos could hardly be excused as perfect,
either.

A quick look
at “Dog Days Are Over” (which has over 20 million views on Youtube)
features a mishmash of unidentified Othered cultures in the background,
such as women in head scarves banging on drums, an all-black gospel
choir with silver foreheads, and two blue women (yes, blue). The already
very light-skinned Welch is painted an even whiter white, and is
featured prominently in the foreground leading the masses of ambiguously
ethnic backup dancers in a frenetic crescendo:

At the end of the video,
they all explode into bursts of bright colours, leaving the “wild”
Welch draped in a furry tattered garment, waving a flag.

What
these music videos show is the amount of misrepresentations around race
that many (white) artists are able to use, all under the guise of
“art.” It happens in fashion photoshoots, music videos, films, books,
etc on more occasions than one could possibly count. While it happens
all the time, that does not make it any more defensible. And being a fan
of an artist who makes a misstep and ends up creating something racist,
intentionally or not, does not oblige you to running to their defense.
Being a card-carrying fan of an artist or musician does not make them
infallible.

Discussions
about whether or not Welch is personally responsible for this racist
music video have cropped up. When you break it down and imagine the
number of people who were behind the storyboarding, choreographing,
casting and creative direction around this video, it is slightly
astounding that not one person raised concerns about how problematic
this video is. Many petitions
have cropped up, asking that “be pulled, edited, or reshot and she and
her label should issue a sincere apology.” In putting forth this music
video attached to her album and her persona, Welch has given it her
unspoken seal of approval. In this case, she has also simultaneously
alienated any number of people of colour and critical folks in her
fanbase.

We’ll probably be waiting with bated breath, as Welch nor her label have responded to the public outcry so far.

In
the end, the most important and all too often ignored factor in the
case of this racist music video is just that: calling it racist. The
fact that in 2011, a top-selling young creative artist has released a
music video like this one means we still need to have conversations
about racism, stereotypes, blackface, and impact that images in music
videos like these ones have. Let’s take this opportunity to talk about
how to hold artists, including pop stars, accountable for propagating
racist imagery. Let’s talk about why blackface
is always wrong, about why reductive stereotypical misrepresentations
of people of colour are harmful and need to be confronted, and why we
still have to unlearn colonial histories and legacies.

When Frank Miller’s
“300″ film was released, I was absolutely outraged by the racist content
of the film and more so at the insensitivity of movie-goers who simply
argued “it’s just a movie.” Later on, I would hear these same
individuals say, “The movie makes you want to slice up some Persians.” I
wrote an article about the film almost immediately after it was
released, and now that I’m still noticing people quoting the movie or
listing it as their “favorite movies,” I’ve decided to update my
original post and discuss some points that will hopefully shed some new
light.

“300” not
only represents the ever-growing trend of accepted racism towards
Middle-Easterners in mainstream media and society, but also the
reinforcement of Samuel P. Huntington’s overly clichéd, yet persisting,
theory of “The Clash of Civilizations,” which proposes that cultural and religious
differences are the primary sources for war and conflict rather than
political, ideological, and/or economic differences. The fact that “300”
grossed nearly $500 million worldwide in the box office may not be
enough to suggest that movie-goers share the film’s racist and
jingoistic views, but it is enough to indicate how successful such a
film can be without many people noticing its relentless racist content.
As Osagie K. Obasogie wrote in a brilliant critique of the film,
“300” is “arguably the most racially charged film since D. W.
Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’” – the latter being a 1915 silent
film that celebrated the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to defend the South against
liberated African-Americans. Oddly enough, both films were immensely
successful despite protests and charges of racism.

Media
imagery is very important to study. Without analyzing and critiquing
images in pop culture, especially controversial and reoccurring images,
we are ignoring the most powerful medium in which people receive their
information from. A novel, for example, may appeal to a large
demographic, but a film appeals to a much wider audience not only
because of recent video-sharing websites and other internet
advancements, but also because the information is so much easier to
process and absorb.

According
to the Cultivation Theory, a social theory developed by George Gerbner
and Larry Gross, television is the most powerful storyteller in culture –
it repeats the myths, ideologies, and facts and patterns of
standardized roles and behaviors that define social order. Music videos,
for example, cultivate a pattern of images that establish socialized
norms about gender. In a typical western music video, you may see female
singers like Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Beyonce wearing
the scantiest of clothing and dancing in erotic and provocative ways
that merely cater to their heterosexual male audiences. These images of
women appear so frequently and repetitively that they develop an
expectation for women in the music industry, i.e. in order to be
successful, a woman needs to have a certain body type, fit society’s
ideal for beauty, and dance half-nakedly. Stereotypical images of men in
music videos, on the other hand, include violent-related imagery,
“pimping” with multiple women, and showing off luxury. Such images make
violence and promiscuous sexual behavior “cool” and more acceptable for
males. As we can see from two studies by Greeson & Williams (1986)
and Kalof (1999), exposure to stereotypical images of gender and sexual
content in music videos increase older adolescents’ acceptance of
non-marital sexual behavior and interpersonal violence.

Cognitive
Social Learning Theory is another social theory which posits, in
respect to media, that television presents us with attractive and
relatable models for us to shape our experiences from. In other words, a
person may learn particular behaviors and knowledge through observing
the images displayed on television. A person may also emulate the
behavior of a particular character in a film or television show,
especially if a close-identification is established between the viewer
and the character. Both theories – Cultivation Theory and Cognitive
Social Learning Theory – apply in my following analysis of “300.”

In
order to deconstruct “300,” I will start by (1) discussing its
distortion of history, then (2) contrast the film’s representation of
Persians and Spartans, (3) correlate Frank Miller’s Islamophobic remarks
on NPR with the messages conveyed in “300,” and (4) conclude with the
importance of confronting stereotypical images in mainstream media and
acknowledging the contributions of all societies and civilizations.

Distortion of History

Initially
a graphic novel written and drawn by Frank Miller, who is best known in
the comic book industry for reinventing Batman in his critically
acclaimed “The Dark Knight Returns,” the inspiration for “300” stems
from true historic events, although Mr. Miller states that it was never
intended to be a historically accurate account of the Battle for
Thermopylae. In any case, the information we have about the Battle for
Thermopylae comes from the classical Greek author, Herodotus, who lived
in the Persian city of Halicarnassus. His book, “The Histories,” became
part of Western folklore in 1850, when America embraced it as the
leading authority on Persian history. Interesting enough, and many
people may not know this, is that prior to 1850, the West had a very
favorable impression of the Persian Empire, particularly because its
main source for Persian history was rooted in the Bible and the
“Cyropaedia,” which was written by another Greek author named Xenophon.
The “Cyropaedia” glorifies the rule of Cyrus the Great, a benevolent
Persian king who will be discussed later. In respect to the Battle of
Thermopylae, the events may have occurred, but it was far different than
the famous myth explains: 300 Spartans held Thermopylae for three days
against over a million Persian soldiers.

This
version of history is portrayed in the Hollywood adaptation of “300” in
heavily stylized fashion that remains faithful to the comic book. The
film’s director, Zack Snyder, said during an MTV interview, “[t]he
events are 90 percent accurate. It’s just in the visualization that it’s
crazy.” And yet, the film hardly mentions that the 300 Spartans were
allied with over 4,000 Greeks on the first two days of the battle, and
over 1,500 on the final day (other sources mention that there were 7,000
to 10,000 Greek allies). The battle was fought in a narrow mountain
pass of Thermopylae where not even two chariots could pass through side
by side; the choice of using this terrain benefited the Spartans and
their Greek allies immensely against the Persians. Many historians agree
that the massive Persian army would have obliterated the Spartan/Greek
forces without much difficulty if the battle were fought on an open
battlefield. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Spartans were
heavily armored and wore armor that weighed 30-40 kg, while the Persians
were lightly armored.

Ephraim
Lytle, assistant professor of Hellenistic History at the University of
Toronto, states that “300” selectively idealizes Spartan society in a
“problematic and disturbing” fashion, which would have seemed “as
bizarre to ancient Greeks as it does to modern historians.” Touraj
Daryaee, Baskerville Professor of Iranian History at the University of
California, Irvine, criticizes the film’s use of classic sources:

Some
passages from the Classical authors Aeschylus, Diodorus, Herodotus and
Plutarch are spilt over the movie to give it an authentic flavor.
Aeschylus becomes a major source when the battle with the “monstrous
human herd” of the Persians is narrated in the film. Diodorus’ statement
about Greek valor to preserve their liberty is inserted in the film,
but his mention of Persian valor is omitted. Herodotus’ fanciful numbers
are used to populate the Persian army, and Plutarch’s discussion of
Greek women, specifically Spartan women, is inserted wrongly in the
dialogue between the “misogynist” Persian ambassador and the Spartan
king. Classical sources are certainly used, but exactly in all the wrong
places, or quite naively.

As I wrote in my post on “The Truth About Thanksgiving: Brainwashing of the American History Textbook,”
omitting and ignoring an entire race of people in historical accounts
is a form of racism because it negates the achievements and stories of
the “Other.” In the film, Persians constantly threaten Spartans with
slavery, and yet, any honest historian knows that the Persian Empire,
particularly the Achaemenid Empire, was built on a model of tolerance
and respect for other cultures and religions. According to the
documentary, “Persepolis Recreated,”
the Persian Empire is the first known civilization in the history of
humankind to practice international religious freedom. Images carved on
the walls of Persepolis testify how Persians interacted and conversed
with nobleman of other nations respectfully and without enmity. Denying
another civilization its own accomplishments and contributions to the
world is like blotting them out from history altogether and rewriting
one’s own prejudice version. As we will learn later, any mentioning of
Persian valor, compassion, and sophistication, would have resulted in a
potential backfiring to the film’s agenda.

At
one point in the film, the Spartan protagonist, King Leonidas,
describes the Athenians as “boy lovers,” which, according to Paul
Cartledge, professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, is
ironic, since “the Spartans themselves incorporated institutional
pederasty [erotic relationships between adolescents and adult men] into
their educational system.”

The
fact that Frank Miller and Zack Snyder stripped the Spartans of
homosexual relations and, instead, made them accuse the Athenians of
being “boy lovers” in order to reinforce their masculinity, shows us a
distortion of history that favors a heavily masculinized and homophobic
take on the Spartans. In modern society, homosexual males are frowned
upon the most because society discourages men to behave in ways that are
contrary to their expected gender traits, i.e. a man must be strong,
emotionless, and courageous – and of course, these play into stereotypes
about homosexuals since it suggests they cannot possess any of those
traits. Therefore, if a man is a “boy lover,” he can never be as great
of a fighter as a heterosexual Spartan. It’s obvious that mentioning the
facts about Sparta’s institutional pederasty would not have made a
connection with the film’s directed heterosexual male audience. This is
evident from Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” film, where many expressed their
outrage of Alexander engaging in homosexual relations, therefore never
developing a close-identification with the character.

Distorting
the history in “300” merely fulfills one component in glorifying the
Spartans and vilifying the Persians. In the next section, we will see
how the film’s visual representation of Spartans and Persians accompany
its biased history for the sake of reinforcing the divide between West
and East. Spartans and Persians: Glorification, Demonization, and Tokenism

Perhaps
the most noticeable offense in the film is how the Persians are
horrifically depicted as monsters. It is not hard to notice the
punctuated differences in skin color: the white-skinned Spartans versus
the dark-skinned Persians. The Persian King, Xerxes, is shown as an
abnormally tall, dark-skinned, and half-naked madman with facial
piercings, kohl-enhanced eyes and, as Dana Stevens from Slate writes,
“[has] a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him.”
The rest of the Persians are faceless savages and demonically deformed.
This demonization of the Persian race extends to malformed characters,
including Persian women, who are depicted as Lesbians and concubines.
Even the elephants and rhinoceroses look like hell spawns. Stevens also
adds:

Here
are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with
the “bad” (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown
people. Disfigured people. Gay men… Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians.
Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws…

Also
noticeable is how the Spartans wear no body armor; instead they are
bare-chested and wear only a helmet, cape, and underwear. This is common
in comic books where physical attributes of male characters such as
muscles are magnified and exaggerated to symbolize strength, power, and
heroism. In sheer contrast, the Persians are dressed in typical
Middle-Eastern attire in pure Orientalist
fashion, which only degrade them into invisible and insignificant
characters without stories. We have seen these contrasting images of
West and East cultivated before, and we still see them today. Whenever a
crisis in the Middle-East is covered by the mainstream Western media,
we tend to see the images of garbed Middle-Eastern men burning flags and
shouting like barbarians, but rarely ever see scholarly and
intellectual Middle-Easterners who are treated with respect and
credibility. As Jack G. Shaheen discusses in his book, “Reel Bad Arabs,”
Hollywood is guilty of vilifying Arabs and Muslims; repeating images of
light-skinned and attractive Western (mostly American)
counter-terrorist heroes blowing away dark-skinned, unattractive, and
“rag-headed” Middle-Easterners. These images have been repeated so much
in the mainstream media that they become the socialized norm:
Arab/Muslim = Evil, oppressive, terrorist, and uncivilized, etc.
Although the ancient Persians in “300” are neither Arab nor Muslim, they
are confined into the same group through modern-day Orientalism.

Throughout
the film, for instance, the constant emphasis on “The Clash of
Civilizations” is not just limited to the manner of visual
representations, but rather extends to what the Spartans and Persians
stand for. Early in the film, we see the Spartan King, Leonidas, resist
against the Persian call for “submission” by bellowing about freedom and
liberty. Just like the visual depictions of Persians in “300” are no
different than Hollywood’s stereotypical and insulting representation of
Arabs and Muslims, neither are the themes. As adolescents and fans
alike eccentrically shout the film’s most memorable quote, “This is
Sparta!” – a line that Leonidas says right before kicking an African man
down a well – they knowingly or unknowingly establish a
close-identification with the Spartan characters and, subsequently, the
heroism they are meant to epitomize. As a result, Persians get
perceived, in modern terms, as “terrorists” – monstrous beings that are
mysteriously driven by an innate desire to conquer, slaughter, and
oppress.

These
differences between Spartans and Persians ring eerily similar to
modern-day tensions between the West and the Middle-East. As Obasagie
writes, “this racialized depiction of freedom, nation, and democracy
becomes central to “300’s” take home message,” but what remains even
more unnoticed is the film’s “unapologetic glorification of eugenics.”
In the very beginning of the film, for example, we see the newborn
Spartans being inspected for “health, strength, and vigor,” while the
weak and disabled are hurled off a cliff onto a large pile of dead
babies. Obasogie further elaborates:

The film suggests that this rather crude form of eugenics is put in
place for military reasons: every Spartan child should either be able to
become a soldier or give birth to one… Initially shocked, audiences are
quickly reassured that this is all for the greater good: nation,
freedom, and the Spartan family. How else can Sparta defend itself – and
inspire modern democracies – unless it reserves scarce resources for
the strongest?

Strongest men, that is, which brings me to my next point: the exploitation of female characters. A blog post written at FirstShowing.net explains “Why Women Should Go See ‘300.’”
The list, which is not even written by a woman, reads: 1. Gerard
Butler, 2. Gerard Butler Naked, 3. Empowered Women, 4. Strong
Relationships, and 5. 300 Nearly Naked Men with 8-Pack Abs. The author
apparently thinks that male eye-candy, romantic relationships, and a
dash of “feminism” constitute a “good film” for all women.

At first glance, the Spartan Queen Gorgo may look like an empowered woman, but she is a token
character, at best. In a predominately White male film, she serves as
the only central female character and assumes a pseudo-feminist role of
flaunting her femininity for the sake of reinforcing the film’s racism
and singular image of masculinity. For instance, early in the film, the
Persian messenger angrily responds to her, “What makes this woman think
she can speak among men?” She responds proudly, “Because only Spartan
women give birth to real men.” Yes, real men, i.e. the
one-sided view of masculinity: aggressive, violent, dominating,
muscular, etc. It seems that any man who doesn’t meet these
characteristics is not a “real man.” It also seems that Spartan women
are treated as merely “manufacturers” of these “real men.”

The
mentioning of women occurs enough times in the film to establish that
Spartans treat their women “better” than the Persians. The only Persian
women we see are sex slaves and disfigured lesbians. In actuality, there
were Persian Empresses such as Azarmidokht, who ruled Persia under the
Sassanid Empire. Ancient Persian women not only engaged in political
matters, but also served as military commanders and warriors. One of the
great commanders of The Immortals
was a Persian woman named Pantea (pictured left), and during the
Achaemenid dynasty, the grand admiral and commander-in-chief for the
Persian navy was a woman named Artemisia. Persian women also owned
property and ran businesses. Unfortunately, we do not see any such
representation in “300.”

A counter-argument may
state that Queen Gorgo actually plays a pivotal role in the film since
she convinces the council to send more soldiers to aid the Spartans.
But her success could never have been accomplished if she did not do
what stereotypical female characters usually do: use her body to get
what she wants. Queen Gorgo initially tries to convince a corrupt
Spartan politician, Theron, but then realizes that she has no choice but
to submit herself sexually to him.

As
we have seen in this section, the glorified violence, racism, and
erotic imagery of the Spartans, as well as the use of women, accentuates
their superiority over the Persians, but perhaps nothing can drive the
point home more than Frank Miller in his own words.

Frank Miller: Well, I don’t really find myself worrying about the state of the union as I do the state of the home-front. It
seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World
is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants … and we’re behaving like a collapsing empire. Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. And frankly,
I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because
of everything that isn’t working out perfectly every time.

NPR: Um, and when you say we don’t know what we want, what’s the cause of that do you think?

FM: Well,
I think part of that is how we’re educated. We’re constantly told all
cultures are equal, and every belief system is as good as the next. And
generally that America was to be known for its flaws rather than its
virtues. When you think about what Americans accomplished,
building these amazing cities, and all the good its done in the world,
it’s kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America, not just
from abroad, but internally.

NPR: A lot of people would say what America has done abroad has led to the doubts and even the hatred of its own citizens.

FM: Well, okay, then let’s finally talk about the enemy. For
some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and
the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people
saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate
their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are
sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have
been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three
thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never
could have built.

NPR: As you look at people around you, though, why do you think they’re so, as you would put it, self-absorbed, even whiny?

FM: Well, I’d say it’s for the same reason the Athenians and Romans were. We’ve got it a little good right now. Where
I would fault President Bush the most, was that in the wake of 9/11, he
motivated our military, but he didn’t call the nation into a state of
war. He didn’t explain that this would take a communal effort against a
common foe. So we’ve been kind of fighting a war on the side,
and sitting off like a bunch of Romans complaining about it. Also, I
think that George Bush has an uncanny knack of being someone people
hate. I thought Clinton inspired more hatred than any President I had
ever seen, but I’ve never seen anything like Bush-hatred. It’s
completely mad.

NPR: And as you talk to people in the streets, the people you meet at work, socially, how do you explain this to them?

FM: Mainly in historical terms, mainly saying that the country that
fought Okinawa and Iwo Jima is now spilling precious blood, but so
little by comparison, it’s almost ridiculous. And the stakes are as high
as they were then. Mostly I hear people say, ‘Why did we attack
Iraq?’ for instance. Well, we’re taking on an idea. Nobody questions
why after Pearl Harbor we attacked Nazi Germany. It was because we were
taking on a form of global fascism, we’re doing the same thing now.

NPR: Well, they did declare war on us, but…

FM: Well, so did Iraq.

Iraq
declared war on the United States? Not only are Frank Miller’s words
filled with incredible absurdity and ignorance, they’re also plagued by
disgusting prejudice that should raise questions about his underlying
messages in “300” and other recent works of his. One of the things I
found really disturbing in Miller’s interview was how he suggested that
“teaching all cultures are equal” and “every belief system is as good as
the next” is a bad thing! What is he implicating here? Are we to teach
that certain cultures and belief systems are better than others?

In
his next response, he essentially calls Islam “sixth century
barbarism,” and then lumps the entire Muslim world into one stereotype.
Then he says “I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a
product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three thousand
of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could
have built.” Perhaps someone should educate Mr. Miller that the Islamic
empires preserved the beloved Greek philosophical texts by
Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Aristotle, and many others. He
should also be informed that algebra was invented by a Persian Muslim,
Mohammad Al-Khwarizmi. The word English word for “algorithm” actually
comes from “Al-Khwarizmi” and the significance of algorithms in
computers, programming, engineering, and software design is immensely
critical. As stated by Michael H. Morgan, author of “Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists,”
Al-Khwarizmi’s new ways of calculating “enable the building of a 100
story towers and mile-long buildings, calculating the point at which a
space probe will intersect with the orbits of one of Jupiter’s moons,
the reactions of nuclear physics… intelligence of software, and the
confidentiality of a mobile phone conversation.” Ironically, the Western
achievements that Frank Miller boasts about could not have been
possible without the collaboration of civilizations.

Conclusion

As
I have written many times in my previous essays, racism is most
dangerous when it has been made more acceptable in society. When the
Nazis dehumanized the Jews, they did so in cartoons and propaganda films
so that the rest of the country didn’t feel sorry about killing them.
When early American cartoons and cinema depicted African-Americans, they
drew them with ugly features and had White actors wear blackface
makeup, respectively. At the time, these obviously racist acts were
acceptable. In modern times, when the insulting Danish cartoons of
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, were released, many non-Muslims
were too shocked at the Muslim world’s reaction than actually taking the
time to realize that the cartoons were drawn out of hate and sheer
Islamophobia. Rather than seeing the cartoons as racist or prejudice,
many defended it as “freedom of expression.” The manner in which certain
people in the Muslim world reacted to the Danish cartoons is another
subject altogether, but it’s worth mentioning that their response
represents a sensitivity that the West has made very little efforts to
understand. For Islamophobes, demonizing the Prophet of Islam wouldn’t
be such a bad idea since dehumanizing the enemy is an essential process
of war. Vilifying the “Other” makes racial slurs acceptable – slurs like
“rag heads,” “camel jockeys,” “towel heads,” “dune coons” among much
worse things.

Although
the Persians in “300” are not Muslim (the movie takes place in the
Pre-Islamic and Pre-Christian era), the visualization of Persians are
identical to the stereotypical images we see of Muslims in other media
representations. Demonizing the Persians during a time when
Middle-Easterners and Muslims are already being vilified simply makes
dehumanization of the “Other” acceptable and more recognizable. I
remember having one odd conversation with a young man who started his
argument by saying, “Xerxes and his Muslim army were a bunch of
tyrants.” I stopped him immediately and told him that his ignorant
comments are precisely the reason why I raise awareness and accuse “300”
of being a propaganda film. Xerxes and his Persian army were not
Muslim, yet I saw many people correlating the film with present-day
tensions between the United States and Iran. Joseph Shahadi recently informed me, the right-wing party of Italy even uses images of “300” in their campaign posters!
It’s sad how many don’t seem to realize that dehumanization of certain
groups has dangerous consequences; after all, before the Holocaust, Jews
were dehumanized.

“300”
may look like a visual breakthrough in cinema “art”, but that doesn’t
make up for its blood-spattering jingoism or its racist content.
Counter-arguments in the film’s defense are often weak with excuses
like, “it’s just a movie,” or “it’s based on a comic book” or “it’s
simply meant to entertain.” The counter-arguments are short and weak
because the film is unapologetic and doesn’t contain anything
sympathetic or appreciative about Persians, their culture, and their
history. It would benefit Frank Miller and Zack Snyder if they saw
Ridley Scott’s brilliant film, “Kingdom of Heaven,” which explores the
complexity of war and celebrates dialogue between great civilizations.
Such films are beneficiary to society because they convey much-needed
messages of coexistence, respect, and understanding that reach wide
audiences.

On a
personal note, it is discouraging that so many people, including
academics, doctors, and scholars, are either not bothered or don’t see
the racism in “300.” And every once in a while, another one of my
friends will do the Spartan “Ha-oooh!” chant around me and not realize
how offensive it is. The fact that so many people cite the movie and
enjoy watching it provides enough support for the cognitive social
learning theory, where people find the Spartan characters likable and
admirable. It is likely that this may be the reason why so many are
defensive of the film – simply because they like the movie so much. But
we, as a progressive society, need to be bold enough to stamp our foot
down and say we will not tolerate racism, just like we would never
tolerate watching or promoting films that glorify the Ku Klux Klan and
the Nazis. As Dana Stevens writes, “If “300” had been made in Germany in
the mid-1930s, it would be studied today alongside “The Eternal Jew” as a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war.”

My
personal hope is that people will appreciate this analysis and realize
the immense impact media has on shaping our thoughts, perspectives, and
views of each other. I would also hope that people are inspired to study
ancient Persian history and learn about the countless contributions of
the Persians, who were among the greatest philosophers, thinkers, poets,
artists, physicians, mathematicians, astronomers, and innovators in the
history of the world – before and after the Islamic era. I must point
out that almost 90% of the paintings I post on my blog are Persian
paintings (compare them with Frank Miller’s horrific depiction of
Persians in “300″ and you will understand how upset and offended one can
be).

The Arab,
Iranian, and/or Muslim communities need to make their mark in the film
industry and I cannot stress that enough. The release of “300” angered,
but also frustrated me because I felt like I could not respond with a
film about Persians due to my low-budget. It is a personal dream of mine
to make a “Cyrus the Great” film someday, and I’m sure many of us have
dreams of certain films we’d like to see about our communities, but they
cannot remain dreams. They must be manifested and brought to life, and
only through perseverance, sheer dedication, and passion can we achieve
our dreams. As evident in “300,” there are people making a living out of
vilifying our cultures, histories, and religions while many of us stand
by and watch the propaganda machine do its dirty work. I understand
that not all of us are aspiring filmmakers, but to those of you who are:
the longer we remain the silent, the less people will know about our
beautiful stories.

I
believe very firmly that Truth prevails in the end and I have faith that
the new generation of progressive-thinkers, Middle-Easterners, South
Asians, and Muslims alike are on their way in making a profound
difference in our world. Someday, the Middle-East and Muslim world will
no longer be demonized and feared, but appreciated and respected. The
media has the power to turn tables around in such a way.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Campus police and administrators at SUNY New Paltz have launched an
investigation after several racists signs - including one on a water
fountain that said "Colored Only" - were posted around campus this
month.

On Nov. 8, a small "Colored Only" sticker was posted on a water
fountain on the first floor of the university's Humanities Building, the
school president said in a memo after the incident.

Hours later, another sign in the shape of a hand giving the middle
finger was found in Lefevre Hall, a dorm, that said "Lynching n---ers
program at 7:30 main lounge," according to a student Facebook page.

That sign originally advertised a dorm event before it was torn into
the shape of a hand and scrawled with the racist message, a student
said.

The signs were torn down and given to campus police, and SUNY New Paltz
president Donald Christian sent an email to students condemning the
incidents.

But two days later, another sign calling for "lynching" was spotted in an elevator, the school and students said.

The sign on the left referenced lynching and was posted in a dorm. The 'Colored Only' sign was posted on a water fountain. (Courtesy of a SUNY New Paltz student via Facebook)

Campus police told the Times Herald-Record that they had a few leads, but no arrests have been made.

In statements to students this week, Christian called for a campus-wide forum to address the incidents on Nov. 30.

"We condemn such acts as contrary to our community values, hopes, and aspirations," Christian said in an email on Wednesday.

"While we cannot know the motivations of the person(s) responsible for
these acts, having them splinter our community may well feed into
[their\] goals. We must not allow that to happen."

Junior Jonathan Espinosa, 20, said he was one of the first to see the water fountain sticker and called it a "hate crime."

The Bronx native told the Daily News that some suspected the signs were
posted in reaction to Black Solidarity Day, a Nov. 8 event when many
black students were given the day off to gather off campus and celebrate
their heritage.

"We came together peacefully among each other as family and friends.
And for this to happen the day after was very shocking," he said.

The university's student association and black student union called for
students to attend a talk dubbed “Racism at SUNY New Paltz” on Thursday
night.

“Some students have said to ignore it, but it think if we continue
ignore it, we enable to people to continue to do stuff like this,”
Espinosa said.

Friday, November 18, 2011

As news unravels around the grand jury report revealing charges against
former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for
raping and sexually molesting underage boys, some former black Penn
State students are now painfully reliving a scandal that occurred at
their university ten years ago. In 2000, the year a janitor witnessed a
boy younger than 13 (“Victim 8” in a grand jury report)
“pinned against a wall” while Sandusky performed oral sex on him, black
students and football players on Penn State’s campus began receiving
hate mail.
The hate mail sent to black students had nothing to do with Sandusky’s
proclivities, but the two incidences shared something in common: both
were ultimately covered up by the university, even as both chain of
events grew worse. Sandusky went on to molest and possibly rape more
boys, according to a grand jury report (Sandusky denies foul play), and hate mail against black students became death threats.
Ultimately, a black man’s dead body was found
by police near Penn State as one of the death threats said it would.
And some black students had to attend their graduation the following May
with bulletproof vests on in fear of their life.
But few know about the death threats because Penn State and Joe Paterno
were not willing to allow bad publicity to ruin the university’s image,
say some of the black students at the center of the tragic events.
LaKeisha Wolf was president of Penn State’s Black Caucus ten years ago,
and she received the lion’s share of life-threatening letters. Today,
she watches the news about Sandusky’s rape charges, the firing of Joe Paterno and Penn State president Graham Spanier, and the student riots that ensued, and it takes her right back to her days dealing with the university.
In fact, Wolf and other concerned black students met with Paterno back
in 2001 because of information circulating that black football players,
like then-quarterback Rashard Casey, had been receiving death threats. Wolf recalls Paterno as almost emotionless.
“He didn’t necessarily blatantly show concern,” says Wolf. “He was just
really composed -- kinda non-emotional I would say. It was like he
would have had the same amount of energy and response whether we were
talking about death threats or what was for lunch. It was just a
non-descript kind of demeanor.”

Paterno is known for his deadpan deliveries during press conferences
after Penn State games, win or lose. But this wasn’t a game. Students
were fearful for their lives. That year, Penn State was experiencing an unusual losing season – a big deal in the college franchise that spawned multiple national championships and undefeated seasons under Paterno’s 45-year reign.
Much vitriol was aimed at Penn State’s black quarterback – also
unusual in Penn State’s mostly white quarterbacked history – Casey, who
along with losing games was arrested in the off-season for fighting a
white cop, allegedly over the cop’s African American date. Casey was
cleared of those charges, but even Paterno admitted that the quarterback remained the target of hate mail.
But Paterno wasn’t so moved to have Penn State confront the hostile climate.
Assata Richards, who was a leader of the Village student movement
to increase diversity initiatives at Penn State, was at the 2001
meeting with Wolf and Paterno and today still remembers the cold
response he gave them about the death threats.
“We asked him to talk to the players because we were concerned about
their safety,” says Richards, “and he said in that meeting that he would
never do anything to put the university in a bad light. So we said,
‘Then you are choosing the university over students lives.’”
Wolf was chilled by Paterno’s response also. She says Paterno told them, “I’m only a football coach.”
Says Wolf, “To me that said that even if he had specific knowledge of
football players’ or students’ lives in danger that he wouldn’t allow
that to risk Penn State’s image being tainted and that is something that
has stuck in my mind for the last ten years.”
Today, in the Sandusky case, too many details
have been revealed that show Penn State officials acted more to cover
up crimes than to report them. Whether that was to protect the
university’s image or not will eventually come out in court. But the grand jury report shows that when a grad assistant, who we now know is assistant football coach Mike McQueary,
reported in 2002 seeing Sandusky raping a ten-year-old boy (“Victim 2”)
in a locker room shower, that officials never reported anything to the
police.
McQueary, who’s now on leave from the team, reported the rape to Joe
Paterno who then reported it to senior vice president for finance and
business Gary Schultz and now resigned president Graham Spanier. But no
one reported to law authorities. Schultz testified that the allegations
as heard from McQueary were “not that serious” and that he “had no
indication that a crime had occurred.”
These same people – Paterno, Spanier and Schultz – were the same
officials involved in the case ten years ago when Wolf was the target of
death threats. But Wolf said none of them nor the police ever
questioned her about the letters she was receiving. Then one week in
April, Daryl Lang, a reporter for Penn State’s Daily Collegian, received a death threat letter aimed at Wolf. It read:
“daryl nigger lover lang, since you love niggers so much, … maybe you
can do president wolf, a favor by delivering the enclosed letter to
her.”
Not long before that, Wolf received a letter from an anonymous source
that said “we are determined to rid this place of this black blight on
our community. Those like you have been run off or killed.” The letter
told Wolf to “have the authorities search mt nittany near the summit,
north slope” for the body of a dead “young black buck.”
A few days later, a the body of a black man was in fact found in the area.
Because Penn State officials wouldn’t do anything to alert the student
body, and Paterno seemed careless about threats to his players, Wolf,
Richards and other black students took matters into their own hands. On
April 21, the day of Penn State’s famous “Blue-White” game, Wolf and 40 other students stormed onto Penn State’s football field just before kickoff to draw attention to the racial hate problems – call it an early "Occupy Penn State" move.
Cops apprehended 14 of them, but 26 made it to the center of the field,
locked arms and sat down until police broke them up and carted them
away. They were all arrested.
Compare that to last week, where hundreds of students occupied downtown State College (where Penn State is located) and held a riot after Paterno was fired, taking down lamp posts, setting cars on fire and overturning a local news van.
When Loop 21 contacted State College police to ask how many were
arrested in that melee we were told that they “couldn’t tell us because
an investigation was ongoing.”
When Assata Richards looks at the Sandusky news, the university’s cover
ups, and the students’ rioting protests she says she’s “not surprised
at all.”
News outlets, says Richards, “are reporting and saying things today
that they said back then: ‘This sounds like a cover up,’ ‘Why weren’t
more people notified?’ ‘Why weren’t parents notified?’ It’s scary for me
because all of these institutional leaders are the same ones we
remember so well and interacted with.”
As for the riots, says Richards: “It’s so interesting because when I
heard about Paterno being fired and how students responded, I’m thinking
about when we were rallying around our issues and how we were arrested.
We were not slapped on the wrist, but we were in no way doing anything
harmful. We never destroyed property, but we were arrested for saying,
‘Hey something is happening, people are being harassed and threatened,
and a person was killed.’ For that, we were treated as criminals.”

If you protest racism during Black Face season in The Netherlands, you will be beaten up and arrested

[Content warning for very racist images, links to videos of police brutality and depictions of State endorsed racism]
Ah, my home, The Netherlands. Tourists from all over the world wax
lyrical about the tulips, the windmills and the widely available weed.
What these tourists hardly ever get to see is how institutionalized
racism works in this country and the lengths the State will go to in
order to protect it. Or how, if you are personally affected by this
racism and you summon the strength to protest it, you will be brutally
beaten up and arrested.
Now, here is the thing: this is a small country. All matters of
racism happen here but they go unreported in international mainstream
media because the Dutch language is mostly inaccessible to the world at
large. So, these matters remain untold, underreported, downplayed or
just ignored. However, international media loves to talk about our most
famous homegrown xenophobe: Geert Wilders. His influence is far reaching
and international. His words repeated all over the international press;
he gets invitations for public engagements and speeches; fellow
populist and xenophobe politicians from all over Europe and places as
dissimilar as the US, Canada or Australia cite him as a source of
“inspiration”. Meanwhile, the general public abroad struggles to come up
with an explanation of why, a country that is present in popular
imaginations as “tolerant”, “multicultural” and “modern” could be
represented by such a divisive and racist force. That is, because
systematically, mainstream media misses the context. And I believe that
the events that transpired on Saturday, during the official opening of
what I like to call “Black Face season”, can provide some of that
context.
“Black Face season” is not exactly the official name for what, in
reality, is a children’s holiday known as Sinterklass. This is the time
of the year when Dutch people carelessly don black face and speak in a
faux Surinamese accents. This is the time of the year when, if you
venture the streets, you are likely to encounter sights like these:
[Image description: a group of eight White adults wearing multi-color
satin and velvet costumes that imitate those of Colonial times. All
people in the photo wear Afro wigs and make-up commonly known as “Black
Face”]Photo via
Or like this:
[Image description: two White women walk down a street while wearing a
satin costume in orange and purple colors, Afro wigs and make-up
commonly known as “Black face”]Photo via

The above, for those not familiar with our local “traditions”, are
popularly known as “Black Pete”, or “Zwarte Piet” in Dutch. These
“colorful” characters are the helpers of Sinterklaas, or more formally
Sint Nicolaas/ Sint Nikolaas or Saint Nicolas in French. Sinterklaas is a
children’s Winter holiday celebrated every year in The Netherlands,
Belgium and some cities in the North of France. According to tradition,
the Saint arrives to The Netherlands a few weeks prior to the
celebration, in a boat, carrying the gifts he will deliver to children.
The “Black Petes” are his helpers and they carry candy and control
children’s behavior (children who misbehave supposedly get no presents
from the Saint). Again, according to “tradition”, these helpers are
Moors, or North African slaves. This “tradition” has evolved throughout
the years, partially due to increasing protests from groups that find
these depictions offensive. Nowadays, it is claimed that the Black face
is due to the fact that the helpers have gone through chimneys and as a
result, their faces are covered in soot. What again, nobody can clearly
explain, is what kind of soot leaves such a uniform and evenly spread
residue. Or worse, why these “chimney dwellers” speak in a fake accent
that parodies the Black population of the Dutch former colony of
Suriname.
Over the years, a small but growing group of people have been
protesting this celebration of Black face costumes and ridiculing of
minorities. Systematically, these protests have been met with a very
strong and stubborn resistance from a majority of White Dutch who refuse
to even consider the racist implications of this “tradition”. Those who
are against the Black Pete depictions are consistently told that there
is nothing offensive in it, that the tradition is not up for debate,
that they are being oversensitive and that, and here comes the usual
xenophobic retort, “if they don’t like it, they should go and live some place else”.
Additionally, people who speak against this are also told that they are
importing North American models of “political correctness” that have no
place in Dutch society. Moreover, the supporters of these Black face
depictions are adamant that there is nothing, absolutely nothing racist
in Black Pete’s representations and that claiming otherwise is the
result of a cultural imperialism brought upon by North American
influences. According to supporters, Dutch culture is so different from
that of the US and the context so incomparable that such discussion
should not even take place. Any attempt at contextualizing the role of
the Dutch in slavery in the Americas and how the continuation of these
racist practices owes everything to the mindset that made such trade
possible is met with protestations and the statement that “only
Americans see offense in Black face, we, the Dutch, are obviously
different and not racist in our traditions”. In sum, what they claim is
that the rights of White people to don Black face are more or less
sacrosanct and native Dutch children have a right to the continuation of
this “tradition” undisputed.
And because I promised context, here’s what the Black face apologists
will never tell you or admit, not even to themselves: the real, harmful
consequences of the perpetuation of this racist stereotypes. In The
Netherlands, where a significant portion of the White native population
demands the freedom to be racist, under
25 years old Moroccan youth (not faux Moors like the Black Pete
“legend” claims) face an unemployment rate of 28%; and under 25 year old
Surinamese youth (the ones who do not speak with a faux Suriname accent
during a children holiday, but the all too real citizens of the former
Dutch colony), face an unemployment rate of 27%. Meanwhile, the
unemployment rate for White, Dutch, under 25 years old natives is at a
meager 6.9%, the lowest in the European Union. And I would love for
anyone to tell me that there is no correlation between racist media
depictions and people’s real lives.
Earlier this year, a group of Dutch people from the former and
present Dutch colonies (Curacao, Suriname, Aruba, etc.), started a
campaign under the banner “Zwarte Piet is racism”.
They invited people to submit a photograph of themselves wearing a
stenciled t-shirt, making a statement against this racist practice. Some
local celebrities like Greg Shapiro (from the legendary comedy group Boom Chicago) have lend their support to the campaign. Moreover, in June this year I was at one of the final performances of the Broadway musical Fela!
(one of the main guests at the prestigious Holland Festival) and some
of the members of the cast, at the end of the show, held a sign that
read “Zwarte Piet is racism”. Unsurprisingly, local media remained moot
and this went unreported.
All of the above is just a mere introduction for the events that
transpired this Saturday, 12th November. This weekend marked the arrival
of the Sinterklaas boat with the little “slave helpers” wearing the
usual Black face. The event is a yearly spectacle that attracts
significant crowds. Parents bring children to the port and they watch
actors disembark with horses and parcels carrying the gifts that will be
handed over to children later on in December. This is an event that
more or less kick starts the pre-Christmas holiday season and to say
that it is massive would be an understatement. Not only is the event
broadcasted in national TV, but it is also reported in news channels,
newspapers, magazines and major websites. Every year, the “official”
arrival takes place at a different Dutch city. This year was the turn of
Dordrecht, a city
in the province of South Holland . The usual pomp and circumstance
surrounded the event, which would have been as inane as it usually is,
had it not been for a small group of people who decided to take a stand
against the practice of Black face. This group of activists, mostly
Black local youth, (Dutch media cannot agree on the exact number, some
say five or six, others say a dozen or so), wore the stenciled T-Shirt
with the words “Zwarte Piet is racism” and stood by the side of the road
while the parade passed by. According to reports, they also yelled
“Zwarte Piet is racism” when the Black Petes were walking in their
vicinity. This was met with disgust by the Dutch in attendance who
complained that they were “ruining” the celebration. Police were
summoned. The State called upon to protect the right of the Dutch to
continue being racist.
What happened afterwards will turn your stomach. Police demanded the
activists to disband and stop protesting. They were told this was a
children’s event and that children had the right to celebrate the
holiday without disturbances. Two men and two women were arrested (link
goes to news report in Dutch) when they stated that they also had the
right to protest practices that actively harm them. They were told, in
no uncertain terms, that they had no right to be there. One of the men
resisted. He yelled that it was his right to protest. This video here, caught by a bystander, shows what happened to this protester.
He was dragged outside the Parade, brutally beaten, thrown into the
ground, dragged some more. In the video, you can see this young Black
man, wearing a t-shirt that states “Zwarte Piet is racism”, subject to
State violence in order to protect a Dutch tradition that is clearly not
open for debate. The right of the White majority to wear Black face
every year should be protected through whatever means necessary, even at
the expense of those who are harmed by it.
Earlier this year, in a highly publicized trial,
Geert Wilders was acquitted of inciting hatred through Hate Speech.
Dutch courts stated that his speech is denigrating but not hateful.
Prosecutors were asking for a sentence that contemplated the possibility
of jail time. Wilders has used coarse and xenophobic language against
immigrants and minorities in this country. His party is funded on the
premise that those of us who hail from nations classified as Non Western
have no place in this society. He actively promotes laws and
initiatives to further alienate and isolate immigrants. And yet, his
words were deemed non hateful and, as such, not deserving of a sentence
or even one day in jail, protected by free speech laws. A young Black man protests racist stereotypes that actively hurt him,
he protests a tradition that further promotes his isolation and his
status as “Other” and he is brutally beaten and dragged through the
ground, arrested. He is told he has no right to protest, no right to
raise his voice. Obviously, the protections afforded by free speech are
only available to those that the State deems to be free to begin with.
The largely unacknowledged responsibility of the Dutch State in the
transatlantic slave trade, practically absent from school history books,
means that some people, still to this day, continue to be bound by
chains that prevent them from exercising the same rights freely afforded
to Gert Wilders. Because above all, the Dutch State has made it clear
that it will protect the right of White Dutch people to be racist
without consequences.Edited to add: Yesterday, Sunday 13th November, the
Sinterklaas Parade also took place in Amsterdam. Five people carrying
flyers stating “Zwarte Piet is racism” stood by the Parade route, in the
Leidseplein attempting to distribute the flyers. In order to avoid
direct confrontation, they didn’t wear the stenciled T-shirts. All five were also arrested for “provocation” and told they had no right to disturb an event aimed at Dutch children. (Link goes to report in Dutch)